Cell Stress Society International

The Society unites researcher investigating stress responses using molecular and cellular approaches, or bridging from the molecular and cellular level to organismal biology. Founded in 1999, the society promotes collaboration among the various fields of stress research, international scientific cooperation, and public awareness.
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Cell Stress Society International (CSSI) honours Ritwick Sawarkar

April 09, 2019

Ritwick Sawarkar receives Alfred Tissières Young Investigator Award

The Executive Council of the Cell Stress Society International announced Ritwick Sawarkar, group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics, as the winner of the 2019 Alfred Tissières Young Investigator Award for his contribution to the heat shock and cellular stress response field based upon the the scientific output and contributions to the field.

The biennal award is named in remembrance of Professor Alfred Tissières, a pioneering investigator in field, who was broadly known for his support and encouragement of young scientists and it is, therefore, fitting that this Young Investigator Award is for a Post-Doctoral Fellow or Assistant Professor less than 10 years beyond the attainment of his or her doctoral degree.

The award will be presented and celebrated during the CSSI Congress in San Diego, CA, 10-14 November 2019.

Ritwick Sawarkars’ research focusses on the study of epigenetic regulators such as DNA- and histone methyltransferases involved in cellular stress responses. To adapt to constant changes in the environment cells evolved sophisticated mechanisms to sense, signal and respond to a multitude of stress. The inability of cells to mount a response tailor to specific stresses is at the basis of several diseases including neurodegeneration. In his lab at the MPI-IE, Ritwick Sawarkar and his team want to understand how cells sense specific stressful environments and how cellular signaling communicates with chromatin to alter stress-specific transcriptional response? A better understanding of the molecular pathways controlling stress responses will pave new avenues for therapeutics in age-related diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease.

In November 2018, the European Research Council (ERC) decided to support Ritwick Sawarkar's research with one of the prestigious ERC Consolidator Grants.

CV Ritwick Sawarkar

Ritwick Sawarkar, born in Mumbai, India, studied microbiology at Bombay University in Mumbai and received his doctorate in biology at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India, in 2010. He was then a postdoctoral fellow at ETH Zurich. Since 2014, Ritwick Sawarkar has been an independent research group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg.